Page 25 of Dangerously
“You are full of shit is what you are.”
March raises his hands and eyebrows. Never copping to anything. “I’m just saying, are you sure you want to travel down that emerald-brick road?”
“As long as I spill blood all over it, it’ll be fine.”
March’s facial expression changes subtly. It becomes much more serious. And I hate it.
“Don’t,” I warn him.
“Don’t what? Remind you how heartbroken he left you.”
“First of all,”—I put my finger right in his face—“I was not heartbroken. I barely even have a heart. I was pissed off. He ghosted me after I tried to ghost him first.”
March arches his eyebrow, like that explanation is barely a scratch on the surface.
“You liked him.” He gently pushes my finger away.
“Ilikedhim before. Ihatehim now.”
“Past tense. Present tense. Still doesn’t change the fact that he got under your skin.”
“We hung out for like forty-eight hours. And he was amazing in bed. That hardly constitutes getting under my skin. Now between my legs, that’s another story.”
“You were not the same when you got back from New Orleans.”
“Does this conversation have a point?”
“Yes, my point is, I don’t want you to let your guard down and get popped in the nose. Or worse. Take a bullet to the chest.” He points his fingers at me like he’s holding a semi sideways. “These are dangerous men. You need to be careful.”
“Please, I’ve dealt with dangerous men my whole life. And I didn’t ask to be put in this situation. I tried to avoid it at all costs. But here I am. What am I supposed to do? At the very least, I have to do the job, and then figure out what to do about Ronan.”
“I don’t know what worries me more. The job or Ronan.”
“The job will be fine,” I brush it off. “I’ll do it and be done.”
March graces me with one of those twisted, deadpan, I-don’t-buy-it looks. “Berry Girl,”—that’s the nickname he uses when he’s about to get real—“you may be a badass bitch and claim you have no heart, but I know you better than anyone. And what I know is, when someone makes it into here,”—he touches his heart—“they have a hell of a hard time getting out.”
“Declan never made it into there.” I poke him hard in the chest, resenting what he’s saying. “The only people I have in my heart are you and Farrah. That’s it. There isn’t room for anyone else.”
“You keep believing that, Berry Girl.”
“I will. ’Cause it’s the damn truth. Now, are you going to help me track down Declan or what? There was zero information in that fucking file Ronan left me.”
March smiles obnoxiously. “Is my middle name León, or what?”
I laugh. “It is. Your mother had a sense of humor when she saw your mane full of curls.”
“That she did. And now I’ll be on the prowl. There’s nowhere the Holy-Hot Irishman can hide.”
I nod at March. “That’s what I’m banking on.”
2
Fallon
I will giveit to Declan O'Dea. He’s a slick motherfucker. It took us nearly three months to track him down, and lo and behold, where do we find him holed up? In a posh apartment building in Fort Point, Boston. Right in Ronan’s damn backyard. Not at all where we expected him to be. But that’s what makes it genius. If I were on the run, I’d be, well, running, for one, and moving every few days. But from all the recon I’ve done, he isn’t looking to move anytime soon. Which is so bizarre. Why stay in the same place and risk being found? I find it so uncharacteristic for a man with his background. A man who knows how to operate like the law doesn’t exist.
Whatever his reasons, they don’t matter to me. I’m here for two things. Kill the guy, get the girl. Easy peasy. March and I devised a plan. We’ve been staking him out for over a week. He doesn’t leave the apartment, but he does have plenty of things delivered. Funny enough, March was able to hack into a local liquor store’s database where Declan likes to order his spirits from.
